Our latest Belcourt 100 Seminar, Nashville X-Rated, explores the provocative and transformative history of Nashville’s adult cinema scene during the ‘60s and ‘80s — when Lower Broadway became home to a cluster of adult theaters showcasing X-rated and pornographic films. At the same time, aging movie palaces and neighborhood theaters like the Belcourt emerged as hubs for independent, foreign and adult-oriented art films, reflecting broader national shifts in film culture. Triggered by the fall of the restrictive Hays Code, the rise of New Hollywood counterculture, and the implementation of the MPAA’s voluntary film rating system in 1968, this era marked a cultural and cinematic turning point — one that opened new creative and controversial possibilities for filmmakers and exhibitors alike. Nashville X-Rated situates Nashville’s theaters within the larger story of evolving cinematic norms, resistance and innovation, and the blurred boundaries between art and obscenity. By tracing how local exhibition practices intersected with national debates over censorship, aesthetics and morality, this seminar reveals how Nashville’s theaters were not just sites of titillation and scandal — but also stages for a changing American film culture.
Presented by T. Minton, Belcourt’s public historian and archivist